After the Tokyo Metropolitan government merrily signed the agreement with Miyagi Prefecture to accept radioactive disaster debris and burn it in regular incinerators operated by municipal governments all over Tokyo (see my post yesterday), Miyagi Prefecture announces that some of the Miyagi disaster debris may be too radioactive when burned.

So? Mix and burn. Or just send it to Governor Ishihara. He won’t care, even if the residents may. He will be happy to receive the highly radioactive ashes from Miyagi and bury them anyway in Tokyo Bay. Mix and bury.

Miyagi Prefecture wants to have the disaster debris from the March 11 earthquake/tsunami processed outside the prefecture, but on November 25 the prefectural government announced that the flammable debris in two towns in the southern part of Miyagi, Watari-cho and Yamamoto-cho, has reached the concentration of radioactive cesium that may warrant caution. The prefecture conducted the survey of radioactive cesium in the debris in 11 municipalities along the coast. Still, the Miyagi government says the debris will be thoroughly cleansed in the temporary storage areas to make sure it is safe, and then shipped outside the prefecture to be buried.

According to the survey, the radiation levels in the debris in the southern part of Miyagi are high. By the types, the debris that contains fabric that is prone to attracting minute dusts has high radiation concentration. The flammable debris in Watari and Yamamoto is estimated to have 350 Bq/kg and 769 Bq/kg of radioactive cesium, respectively.

The flammable debris will be moved to the secondary temporary storage areas and be burned. However, the prefectures that have been hit by the disaster, including Miyagi, has requested that part of the ashes be transported outside the prefectures and processed [buried, recycled]. According to the national guideline, radioactive cesium would be concentrated up to 33 times after burning the debris. If the flammable debris from Watari and Yamamoto were burned on its own, it might exceed the national guideline of 8000 becquerels/kg [of radioactive cesium] and couldn’t be buried.

Why do they pretend as if 8000 becquerels/kg from the debris were a big deal, when the Ministry of the Environment has long issued the guideline saying the radioactive debris/garbage may be mixed with debris/garbage not contaminated with radioactive materials (if any in Tohoku and Kanto) so that the radiation gets lowered in the ashes?

Why does Miyagi insist that part of the debris ashes be buried outside Miyagi, anyway?

… these are not “dosimeters” but “glass badges” that passively collect radiation information. It won’t help these children or their parents to avoid high-radiation areas and spots, it won’t tell them how much radiation they will have been exposed unless they are sent in to a company to interpret the data.

Radiation exposure is increased by a factor of a trillion. Inhaling even the tiniest particle, that’s the danger.

Yo: So making comparisons with X-rays and CT scans has no meaning. Because you can breathe in radioactive material.

Hirose: That’s right. When it enters your body, there’s no telling where it will go. The biggest danger is women, especially pregnant women, and little children. Now they’re talking about iodine and cesium, but that’s only part of it, they’re not using the proper detection instruments. What they call monitoring means only measuring the amount of radiation in the air. Their instruments don’t eat. What they measure has no connection with the amount of radioactive material.

Dr. Helen Caldicott (Co-founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility):

You’ve bought the propaganda from the nuclear industry. They say it’s low-level radiation. That’s absolute rubbish. If you inhale a millionth of a gram of plutonium, the surrounding cells receive a very, very high dose. Most die within that area, because it’s an alpha emitter. The cells on the periphery remain viable. They mutate, and the regulatory genes are damaged. Years later, that person develops cancer. Now, that’s true for radioactive iodine, that goes to the thyroid; cesium-137, that goes to the brain and muscles; strontium-90 goes to bone, causing bone cancer and leukemia. It’s imperative … that you understand internal emitters and radiation, and it’s not low level to the cells that are exposed. Radiobiology is imperative to understand these days.”